In the wake of a sec­ond fiery protest this week by res­i­dents of Cochrane Vil­lage, Guapo over ma­jor a land­slip, Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards is as­sur­ing that re­pair works will be­gin soon.

Res­i­dents blocked the South­ern Main Road ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing with burn­ing de­bris near Max­ine Street, where a land­slip has de­stroyed half the road, but it was quick­ly ex­tin­guished by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Res­i­dent Shervis Gibbs told Guardian Me­dia that res­i­dents are frus­trat­ed. He said sev­er­al years ago there was a land­slip in that same area and a re­tain­ing wall was built. But, ear­li­er this year, he said they no­ticed a WASA leak and a “pin­hole” in the road that even­tu­al­ly turned in­to a crater.

While WASA fixed the leak, Gibbs said soon af­ter, the road be­gan crum­bling and now on­ly one lane of traf­fic can pass at a time.

“The road drop just over a month ago and now un­der there is like a wa­terbed right now,” he com­plained.

Not­ing that this was the main thor­ough­fare to and from La Brea to Point Fortin, he said the au­thor­i­ties need to act swift­ly to have it re­paired.

He added, how­ev­er, that there are sev­er­al pot­holes and de­pres­sions on the main road as far as Oropouche to Point Fortin.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Denis­sa Cole, who runs a print­ery a short dis­tance away from the land­slip, said sales have been af­fect­ed. “Be­cause of the land­slide, peo­ple re­al­ly would not want to stop so busi­ness kind of down,” Cole said.

“We have cus­tomers park­ing low­er down the road and they have to walk here. It is al­so dan­ger­ous be­cause the road don’t have a pave­ment. Even the poles where we put up our signs, we re­alised that it go­ing down (the land­slide).”

Cole said of­fi­cials vis­it­ed and sur­veyed the land­slip some­time ago but gave them no an­swers as to when it will be fixed.

Call­ing for ur­gent re­pairs, she said the land­slip is a haz­ard to road users and the traf­fic flow will in­crease when school re­opens in Sep­tem­ber.

“In the night, the way how the dri­vers does be dri­ving, it will al­ways have some con­flict with mo­torists com­ing down and mo­torists go­ing up,” she com­plained.

Bev­er­ly Mor­son, the pro­gramme di­rec­tor at Seren­i­ty Place, which is next door to the print­ery, said, “We are very con­cerned about it be­cause it so close to the cen­tre and we don’t know how much worse it will get. It may very well af­fect us.”

Al­so ex­press­ing con­cern about the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion when school re­opens, she said, “It is af­fect­ing the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we don’t know what could hap­pen. If it con­tin­ues, with the kind of weath­er that we hav­ing, it will con­tin­ue to col­lapse.”

Mor­son said they are al­so faced with an­oth­er is­sue, as the rain from the road con­tin­ues to flow in­to the prop­er­ty, which is be­low road lev­el. Com­plain­ing that this has been go­ing on for six to eight years, she said they have made nu­mer­ous com­plaints to the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion but noth­ing has been done.

Con­cerned that the wa­ter is un­der­min­ing the prop­er­ty, she said, “Some­thing like this should have been ad­dressed a long time now.”

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, Richards said land spillage was com­mon in that lo­ca­tion but a leak­ing WASA line may or may not have been re­spon­si­ble for the re­cent slip­page which oc­curred al­most two months ago. How­ev­er, he said the WASA leak was re­paired and they are aim­ing at start­ing and com­plet­ing works be­fore school re­opens.

Urg­ing res­i­dents to ex­er­cise pa­tience, Richards said, “The ten­der for a con­trac­tor is clos­ing to­day. Once the ten­der clos­es be­cause the scope is al­ready done, they would come in and start to ex­e­cute works with the pur­pose of fin­ish­ing be­fore school re­opens.”

Not­ing the fund­ing is scarce, Richards said the min­istry would have had to redi­rect mon­ey pri­ori­tised for an­oth­er project for the land­slip re­pairs.

Aware that the road from Oropouche to Ica­cos is in a de­plorable state, he said, “There is not enough mon­ey to pave the en­tire road­way at this time, so the (min­istry) has de­cid­ed that they are go­ing to put four crews from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port all the way to La Brea to Chatham and Ica­cos and do what­ev­er patch­ing that is nec­es­sary so that the road could be main­tained.”

How­ev­er, he said, when tyres are burnt on the road it caus­es fur­ther dam­age.